Back in early November, I experienced a Cebu Pacific online booking gltich. I got triple bookings on the same travel date (is that even possible???) with Cebu Pacific because of errors that occurred during the online transaction. I checked with my credit card provider, Citibank, and the charges were reflected indeed, though still floating at that time. (Full details of my story here and here.)

Anyway, I am glad that the problem has been resolved. But largely because I took active steps. Cebu Pacific did very little to resolve the problem.

First I called Citibank to verify the status of the charges.

Next I called up Cebu Pacific’s customer service hotline. This is the challenging part, because it could get really difficult to get through. On top of the long waiting and repeated attempts to finally get through, talking to the call center agents (CCA) is soooooo exasperating. One one hand, I wished they had more common sense; on the other, I knew they could only do/say so much.

This one step alone (of calling the hotline) will test your commitment to be righted.

During the first conversation with CEB’s CCA, I was told to follow up after a week. So follow up I did. Of course, I was once again told to follow up after another week!

Last week in November 1, I was told by the Cebu Pacific call center agent to call after one week to follow up on the status of my complaint.

On October 31, three transactions were charged to my credit card account after I tried booking online during the 1-Peso Seat Sale. All three transactions had error results on the Cebu Pacific website. But when I checked with my credit card, all three apparently went through. (Story here.)

Of course calling the Cebu Pacific Call Center (632 7020888) yesterday to follow up was a futile exercise. After putting me on hold for 30 minutes, this is what I get:

Call Center Agent Y.L.: I am sorry, ma’am, but your case is still under investigation. I cannot give you any information at this time.

I wasted thirty precious minutes of my time waiting just to hear this useless excuse.

So, is this going to be a case of who gives up first? Considering the money is just a little less than two thousand pesos, should I just simply shrug this off and let it go?

I intend to pursue this. I have already called my credit card provider. The bank gave me a temporary credit for two of the three charges. (Two of the three because, despite the royal crappiness of CEB, hub and I are still going to take one flight. Oh the risks! I am scared!) Meanwhile, I have filed a dispute against Cebu Pacific.

It’s not just the money involved. Customer service in this country truly sucks because companies are not compelled to step it up. Why? Because Filipino consumers take it! The line of thinking is: “Tutal, maliit lang na pera yan. Hayaan ko na, sayang ang pagod at oras.”

If we all thought this way, then we definitely have no right to complain about anything in this country. We deserve the crappy customer service that we get.

~~~

Planning early for holiday getaways always has its benefits. I’ve booked our (hub and my) anniversary getaway for 2010 with Air Asia already. And I got such a wonderful deal. For an amazing Caribbean holiday, why not fly to Dominican Republic and stay in one of the luxurious leisure puerto plata Hotels.

Last Friday, I got all giddy and excited as soon as I opened the email announcement about the Cebu Pacific piso seat sale.

CEB allots 100,000 seats for our sought-after P1 seat sale to all destinations!
Travel June 15 to September 30, 2010.

So I went to the website and started looking into the dates I wanted. Unfortunately, most of the weekends on my preferred dates had no promo rates. I had to check my 2010 calendar, and finally found some weekdays in August where I think I will be able to squeeze in a few days off with the hub.

Now with my dates, I started searching again. Bummer – no more promo seats in the more popular destinations. And the site was sooooo sloooow. So I decided to call it a night.

I asked the Citibank customer service rep if there’s any way to reverse two of the three charges. I was told that I will have to speak with Cebu Pacific customer service. The rep also added that the charges will still float for 14 days until confirmed by Cebu Pacific.

I was calling the Cebu Pacific Metro Manila call center number 02 7020888 almost all afternoon but I could not get through. I decided to send an email instead. (As of writing time, my email remains unanswered.)

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I started blogging in 2006 after giving birth to Nate, partly due to boredom. :) I really just wanted to try creating an online journal about my kids, and also to see if the knack for writing was still there.
But blogging opened up a whole new dimension, leading to many new experiences and opportunities. Read More...